Genentech, Inc

How did it start? It began in 1976 with a meeting over a glass of beer between Bob Swanson, then a bright young venture capitalist, and Herb Boyer (UCSF), who with Stan Cohen (Stanford) had just performed some of the key experiments of recombinant DNA technology. The meeting is now immortalized in a brass statue in the new Founders’ Research Center. Genentech was founded later that year, and cloned human insulin and human growth hormone in the late 1970s. The first public offering of Genentech stock, in 1980, was greeted with wild enthusiasm.